Musical groupinteraction (MGI) is a complex social setting, with particular characteristics that require certain cognitive skillsthat may also elicit shared psychological states. We argue that many of these MGI-specific components may also be important for emotional empathy, the ability to experience another person’s emotional state and produce a relevant and supportive response. We thus hypothesized that long-term repeated participation in MGI could help enhance a capacity for empathy even outside of the musical context, through a familiarisation with and refinement of MGI empathy-promoting musical components (EMPCs). We tested this hypothesis by designing an MGI program for primary school children consisting of interactive musical games implementing various EPMCs. We ran the program for an entire school year and compared the emotional empathy of MGI children to control children using existing and novel measures of empathy before and after the program. Our results confirm our hypothesis: MGI children showed higher emotional empathy scores after the study compared to its beginning, and higher scores than control children at the end of the study. These findings shed new light on the emotional processes involved in musical interaction and highlight the remarkable potential of MGI for promoting positive social capacities such as empathy.